


turn down the lights, turn down the bed

by hudders-and-hiddles (LeslieWrites)



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, David is a good friend, Episode: s05e06 Rock On!, Friends to Lovers, Friends with a one-time-only benefit, M/M, POV David Rose, Porn with Feelings, but he's also an idiot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-04
Updated: 2019-11-08
Packaged: 2021-01-22 13:27:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21302825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LeslieWrites/pseuds/hudders-and-hiddles
Summary: Patrick has a date. David offers to help.
Relationships: Patrick Brewer/David Rose
Comments: 344
Kudos: 935





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The title comes from "I Can't Make You Love Me" by Bonnie Raitt, which should probably give you some insight into that angst tag. You know we love happy endings around here though. If for some reason you don't know the song or just want to enjoy a good cover, check out my favorite version at the moment, [this cover by Teddy Swims](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Bm14Bv1DKU). This song is at the top of my wishlist of songs for Noah to cover though, so if he ever does somehow, that's obviously gonna be the new fave.
> 
> Big thanks to jcam and Bea for giving the first chapter a read when I needed a little reassurance to keep going. <3

David is distracted. 

On the other side of the counter, Alexis is going on about… templates? e-commerce? branding something-or-other? Whatever it is, David hasn’t heard a word of it because there’s a guy over there flirting with his business partner.

Which is fine of course. Patrick is cute and nice and available, and aside from that time his pretty, petite ex-fiancé had made a quick pit stop at the store last year, David’s never seen nor heard anything about Patrick dating anyone at all. That’s something they seem to have in common—ever since they opened Rose Apothecary nearly two years ago now, most of their time and energy has gone into the business, leaving little time for either of them to have much of a love life.

Had there been a point when David had thought—hoped—that maybe the two of them could be a thing? That there was a spark of something there that could catch fire if they’d let it? Okay, sure. He’d thought about it a time or two (or twenty). But time had gone on, and the flames never grew, and David had come to realize that the teasing and the banter that he’d once thought was flirting really just seemed to be the way Patrick made friends. It’s still a hallmark of their business partnership, of their still-growing friendship, but it seems that Patrick jokes with Stevie and Alexis in much the same way. 

Which is to say David isn’t special. Patrick isn’t ever going to see him as any more than a friend, and that’s fine. David has worked hard on letting go of the crush that had seemed so overwhelming in those early days, settling in to a place where working beside Patrick every day is a comfort and not an ache in the pit of his belly. And they do work well together. Because of it, their business is thriving, and David has another person in his life that he can count as a good friend. There’s nothing else he could really ask for.

So when the guy in the tight polo and the long, square-toed shoes comes to ask for a pen and some paper, David hands it over with a smile, ignoring the simpering pout Alexis sends his way to focus on the way Patrick’s face lights up in pleasant surprise as the guy hands over his number. Patrick deserves this. He’s a great guy, and he deserves to go on dates with cute boys who chat him up at work. David’s happy for him. He is.

He is.

If he has to slip into the back while Alexis and Patrick chat about cute, under-30-somethings apparently named Ken, it’s only because he’s trying to stay on top of work and give his business partner a chance to really enjoy the moment. He’s certainly not running away. What even is there to run away from? He’s happy for Patrick. He’s happy for Patrick because that’s what friends do.

Friends don’t continue to harbor secret crushes on their uninterested business partners well past the point of sanity. And friends definitely don’t picture themselves using the family car to run over bright-eyed, million-dollar-smiled, polo-wearing guys named Ken who hand out their phone numbers to funny, charming, button-faced businessmen in the middle of a Monday afternoon. Nope. Friends don’t do that, so David definitely doesn’t either.

Instead, he puts the unopened box of hand creams back on the shelf with a sigh, shakes the tension from his fingers, and plasters on his most genuine smile before stepping back through the curtains just in time to lob a quip about the joys of flirting with customers. Patrick gives him a skeptical look, the kind where his mouth turns down but his eyes sparkle like he’s smiling beneath it all, and it’s so familiar that David can’t help but smile for real in response.

He’s happy for Patrick—happy he’s happy—because that’s what good friends do, and David is a good friend. Nothing more. 

And that’s okay.

*

After an unusually busy lunch rush, they’re tidying all the merchandise that’s been left askew, David wiping fingerprints from lids and labels before setting jars and bottles back into their meticulous rows, when Patrick brings it up.

“I think I might call that guy.”

David stops buffing a bottle of body milk with the sleeve of his sweater and sets it down carefully, turning it this way and that under the pretense of aligning it perfectly, just to give himself another moment before he has to respond. “Oh,” he says carefully, aiming for friendly curiosity but not entirely sure if he hits the mark. 

When he looks up, Patrick’s warm brown eyes are wide with what could be any of a number of emotions—eagerness, nerves, hesitation, excitement. Whatever it is, it feels like he’s looking for David’s approval or at least some kind of reassurance. He’s still new at this, David reminds himself. Patrick had come out to him after the whole Rachel incident, and David knows that he’s been hard on himself for how long it took him to figure it all out. He probably just needs a little encouragement that he’s doing the right thing here. 

“Do you, um. Do you find him attractive?”

Patrick’s eyes track a customer moving somewhere behind David, waiting until the bell rings and the door closes behind them to reply. “I— Yeah. Sure. He was…” His hands dig their way deep into his pockets, a nervous habit that David finds endlessly endearing. “...cute. He was cute.” It comes out with more confidence the second time, like he’d tried it out and was surprised to find it easier to admit than he’d expected.

“Then, yeah, I think you should call him.”

A flicker of something unnameable creases Patrick’s brow, his mouth pressing into a firm, tight line along with it, before he nods. “It’s just that, I mean, I’ve been with Rachel and, like, a handful of other girls—”

“We’ve  _ all _ been with a handful of other girls,” David teases, just for the pleasure of watching it land in a brief flash of a grin on Patrick’s face before it settles back into that pinched expression.

“—but this would be the first guy, and I just— I feel like I don’t know what I’m doing.”

That nearly brings a smile to David’s face, but he tucks it in under his teeth instead, biting his lips between them. It’s cute, Patrick’s need to exude confidence. He’s a planner—David has learned that all too well over these last two years—and the unknown makes him uncomfortable in a way David finds both irritating and inexplicably charming.

“It’s just a date,” he says. “You call him up, ask him to dinner. If you have a good time, maybe you stay for dessert. Maybe you walk him to his door and you kiss him good night.” That’s what normal dates are like, right? David’s never really been on one, but then again he’s never exactly been a traditionalist either. Patrick though, most of his dates have probably gone exactly like that. All he has to do is be himself, and everything will be fine. “It doesn’t really have to be any different than any other date you’ve been on.”

Patrick’s frown deepens, and David sighs. He wants this for Patrick. Maybe not  _ this _ exactly, but he wants him to go on dates, if that’s what Patrick wants. He wants him to kiss guys and have fun and fall in love and find a whole lifetime of happiness for himself that he’d never thought he’d have. It’s not like David is ever going to have that, but at least one of them should. If he can’t make it happen for himself, maybe he can at least help make it happen for his friends.

“Best case scenario,” he says, putting on the  _ everything is just great _ voice he uses when dealing with their most difficult customers, “you go on a first date with the love of your life. Worst case scenario, you have a funny bad date story you can tell to the next guy who gives you his number. Either way, fun!”

It takes a few seconds but Patrick finally nods. “Okay. Yeah. I think I’ll call him,” he says, turning back to the shelves he’d been tidying.

David watches the shift and stretch of his shoulders beneath his ubiquitous blue button-up and tries his best not to think about how someone else is going to get a chance to appreciate that sight. It’s not like he has the right to be jealous about it anyway—Patrick isn’t his. 

He reluctantly turns back to pick up another body milk and tells himself that he did the right thing.

*

Wine Wednesdays are David’s favorite day of the week. Patrick hadn’t been too keen on the idea when David had first suggested it—regularly giving away stock for free hadn’t seemed like the best business strategy—but David had talked him into trying it, and the profits from the first week had done the rest of the talking. It hasn’t slowed down since. Wednesday has become one of their most profitable days of the week, with customers milling about enjoying samples of wine and cheese and chocolates throughout the afternoon, giving David the chance to upsell them on everything from lip balms to decorative buoys.

“I can’t believe you managed to get Mrs. Steenberg to buy  _ two _ scarves.” Patrick flaps a loose hand toward the windows and the warm, sticky weather beyond them. “It’s the middle of May!”

The profits are great, but this is really his favorite thing about Wine Wednesdays. They obviously can’t recork and sell wine that’s been opened, so every Wednesday now ends like this, with the two of them—and often Stevie and sometimes Alexis and Ted, too—sitting around the store well into the evening, sharing stories and laughter and whatever’s left of the day’s open bottles of wine. It’s entirely unlike the kinds of evenings David had usually spent with his friends in New York, and it’s becoming harder and harder to remember how he’d lived without it.

Tonight, however, Stevie has a text date with Emir, and Alexis and Ted are out for dinner with his mom while she’s in town, which leaves just the two of them to enjoy Wine Wednesday alone. 

“What can I say,” David replies. “It’s a gift.”

Patrick flashes him one of those smiles—one of those warm, fond, sparkling looks that David used to take for flirting. It still sends a shock of heat lancing through his stomach, but it isn’t the searing, painful thing it once was. Patrick takes another sip of wine, swirling the rest idly around the glass, his gaze falling to watch the little ruby typhoon in his hands. “I called him, by the way. Ken.”

“And?”  _ I’m happy for him, _ David reminds himself.  _ I’m happy for him. _

“We’re having dinner on Friday.”

“I’m happy for you,” David replies. He even mostly means it.

The look on Patrick’s face, however, makes him question whether that sentiment is shared.

“Should I… not… be?”

“No, no, it’s—” Patrick abandons his glass in favor of dragging his hands through his hair. It had grown out a bit over the winter, just long enough to hint at well-hidden curls, but he’d cut it short again last week and seems surprised at how little there is to run his fingers through now. “I want to do this,” he says. “I do. I’m just… nervous, I guess.”

David sets his glass down, too, careful not to upset their display of potted plants in the process. “It’s okay to be nervous,” he offers. “But like I said the other day, it doesn’t have to be different than any other date just because it’s a guy.”

“It is though,” Patrick insists. “The girls I dated, it didn’t— I wasn’t—” He cuts himself off with a huff, thumb rubbing across the calluses on his palm that David has learned apparently come from years of playing baseball, the ones Patrick habitually rubs when he’s frustrated. David’s watched him do it dozens of times—when getting into it yet again with Ronnie, when David disagrees with a business decision, even sometimes when he’s on the phone with his mother—but he’s never seen him quite this frustrated with himself before. “I didn’t care,” Patrick says finally. “Before, I mean. I went on dates and did what I knew I was supposed to do, but at the end of the day, it didn’t matter if it went well or not. It wasn’t— It wasn’t what I really wanted, either way.”

“But you actually want this,” David says, finally understanding.

“I just want to be able to go out with a guy I like and have a good time, like normal people do.” He drags his hands through his hair again, groaning when his fingers are left grasping at air. “I don’t want to be thirty and fumbling my way through all of this like a damn teenager.”

“Okay, but there’s no timeline for—”

“I know that.”

“So it’s fine if—”

“I don’t want it to be fine! I’ve spent my whole life on fine. On okay. I want— I want it to be good. To be… right.”

Oh.

They’re talking about more than just dating now. The deep flush of crimson under Patrick’s fair skin confirms it.

Of course, Patrick wants the sex to be good. He’s confident and capable and sometimes even a little cocky in that effortlessly likable kind of way. He has a plan for everything and is always overprepared. Of course he wants to feel just as confident in the bedroom.

“I’ve never even kissed a guy,” Patrick admits, sagging back in his seat, all the fight gone out of him now. Instead there’s a lingering sadness in the curve of his lips and the tilt of his shoulders, and David wants to wrap him up in his arms until it fades away. 

He feels a sharp pang of empathy for young Patrick, trying to make his love life make sense and never quite understanding why it wouldn’t. For David, knowing who he liked at least had come easy—it was often everything else about it that had been hard.

A laugh falls from Patrick’s mouth, shaky and miserable. “I just wish there was a way to practice, I guess. Since I missed out on all that as a kid.”

The answer is out of David’s mouth before he even knows he’s going to say it, before he has time to even question how stupendously bad of an idea it really is. 

“You can practice with me.”

In the silence that follows, the entire world seems to stop, time and the universe pausing while reality tries to catch up to David’s mouth.

“What?”

David wants to take it back. Wants to explain. Wants to offer again. Wants to crawl under a rock and wait to die of mortification. But what he says is, “Friends do that. Sometimes. Sex, I mean. Sleep together. Just as friends.”

Long seconds tick by, heavy like the approaching steps of an executioner.

“You… want to sleep with me?”

David’s hands carve chaotic circles in the stifling air between them. “I— We don’t— I was just trying to help, but—”

“By offering to have sex with me.”

There’s a grin just starting to peek out beneath the disbelief in Patrick’s words, and it eases the gnawing regret in David’s belly. Patrick isn’t horrified. David hasn’t ruined everything. Maybe he can just play this all off as a joke. “Yes,” he says. “Yes, I’m pretty sure that’s what I said.”

Patrick chuckles, small but sincere. “Well, that’s a very… generous offer, but you don’t have to do that.” He’s giving David an out. All he has to do is take it. 

So of course he says, “No, I’d like to.” 

If Patrick had any eyebrows to speak of, they’d be launching themselves into space right now. God, David wishes he could stop himself from being such a fucking idiot all the time.

“I don’t mean I’d  _ like _ to,” he backtracks. “I just mean I’d like to. Help. I want to help. If I can.” He squeezes his eyes closed and shakes his head, wishing the earth would open up and swallow him whole. “You’re my friend,” he tries again. “Friends help friends, or so Stevie keeps telling me, though that’s mostly when she wants a discount on another case of wine. But I’m trying. To, you know, be better at that.”

When he finally stops rambling and looks at Patrick, he’s surprised to find that he appears to be giving it actual thought. “You’re serious?” he asks eventually.

“Yes? I’m— Yes.” David is, even if he doesn’t want to be. It would be so much easier not to be.

Patrick’s eyes find his, searching for something there. David doesn’t look away, hoping that he finds it, whatever it is he needs to see there. He nods once and then is up out of his seat, turning away to gather the remnants of Wine Wednesday for the recycling bin. “Let’s sleep on it,” he says. “We’ve both had a good bit of wine, and I don’t know if we should be making that kind of decision in this state.”

They’ve had half a bottle at most between them, and David’s never felt as sober as he does in this moment, but he lets Patrick get away with the lie. “Sure.” 

It at least doesn’t feel like everything is going to come crashing down around him. It doesn’t feel like Patrick is going to go home and figure out how to pull out of their business now that his partner has offered to sleep with him. For once, David doesn’t let his imagination run away with him and settles on the most rational scenario—Patrick really does just need a night to think it over. So he lets it go for now and downs the last of the wine in his glass, hoping it’s enough to keep his fingers from shaking as he joins Patrick to start on their closing checklist.

*

Thursdays and Fridays are Patrick’s days off this month, so it’s lunchtime before David hears from him, diving for his phone as soon as he hears the text come in.

_ Does your offer still stand? _

_ Yes. _

_ Then yes. _

_ Tonight at 8? My place? _

_ I’ll be there. _


	2. Chapter 2

“Hey, come on in,” Patrick says, stepping aside to let David through the door to his apartment. It’s only been a few weeks since his housewarming party, but David can see signs of how much more lived-in the space has already become. Books on the table. Dishes in the drying rack. Pictures of friends and family on the mantel. It looks homey, like exactly the kind of place Patrick belongs, and Patrick, despite what they’re here for tonight, looks comfortable. Settled. Happy.

_ That’s why I’m doing this, _ David reminds himself, setting his bag on the floor beside the sofa and taking the glass of wine Patrick offers him. _ This is all to help Patrick be happy. _

What it’s going to make David remains to be seen, but he’s never been one to put his own happiness above what anyone else wants. If he can manage to turn off his brain and just let this be what it is though, he thinks maybe it will be alright. Sex can just be sex—David’s had a lifetime of practice with that.

“You okay?” Patrick asks.

“Wha— Oh, yeah, sorry. I just realized that I-I forgot to wipe off all the applesauce jars after Roland stopped by today.”

“Do we need to go to the store right now and burn it all down before it can spread, or do you think that can wait till morning?” His smile is wide and teasing, and David wonders if Ken will get to see that tomorrow, if Patrick will torment him the way he torments David, if Ken will like it as much as David does. Perhaps Patrick will tease David less if he does, like he only has a limited amount of that good-natured needling stockpiled inside him and has to ration it out amongst everyone in his life. Maybe he’ll have to pull from the pile currently reserved for David to offer it to Ken instead.

Okay, no, David’s not going to do this to himself right now.

He takes an over-large gulp of his wine and sets the glass on the coffee table. He had thought before that maybe he’d come over, they’d make some small talk, kind of ease into all of this. But if he’s just going to sit here thinking about Patrick and Ken the entire time, maybe they should just go for it.

_ Here goes nothing. _

“Um, I think we should… set some ground rules. Before we. Do... anything.”

“Oh, we’re just… jumping right in.” The smile on Patrick’s face slips away in favor of something far more serious, and he places his own glass on the table beside David’s, folding a leg up onto the sofa so that he can turn and face him fully. “Okay."

Even though David started this conversation, it’s tempting to make a joke or deflect somehow, to pick up his glass again and hold it between them like a barrier so that he can squirm away from all that focus and attention, but he takes a deep breath and forges on. “Hard limits?”

Patrick’s forehead crinkles adorably. “I don’t—”

“Is there, um, anything you already know you don’t like? Anything you know you don’t want to do?”

“Oh, huh.” He pauses to give it actual consideration. “Not really, I guess. I’m… open?” It’s more of a question than a definitive statement, but David can work with that. “What about you? Is there anything I shouldn’t do?”

There’s a laundry list of things David doesn’t enjoy, actually, but this isn’t a kink negotiation; they aren’t about to play out a scene, so most of the things on his list are unlikely to come up. Still, there are a couple of limits he’d promised himself that he would set.

“I have two ground rules for… this. Tonight.”

Patrick’s face is eager, like this is information he desperately wants, and for whatever reason that more than anything hammers home the fact that they’re really going to do this. 

“One. No penetrative sex. Fingers are negotiable, but nothing more.”

“Okay,” Patrick agrees readily, the height of his shoulders dropping an inch or so in what David thinks might be relief. He’d decided on this rule for both of their sakes. Patrick is the kind of go-getter who might want to try _ quote-unquote everything_, but that’s not something David thinks would be good for either of them tonight. Sure, he’s had his fair share of casual fucks, but as much as he might be trying to convince himself otherwise, deep down he knows that there is something decidedly not-casual about this for him. The mere thought of being inside Patrick or having Patrick inside him is too much to handle, especially when it can happen once and only once, and the last thing he wants is to have to navigate that discussion in the middle of things when he’s more likely to just give in to whatever Patrick wants. 

So he’s taking it off the table in advance. It’s the smart thing to do. He’s going to try his best to take care of Patrick tonight, to make this a good experience for him, but he has to take care of himself a little, too.

“Two.” David huffs out a nervous breath because this rule is purely for him, and he isn’t sure Patrick’s going to like it. But David has thought about it all day, and he needs this to protect himself. That’s not something he’s used to doing, but he’s trying. “No kissing. On the mouth, I mean.”

Patrick’s forehead wrinkles, and he shakes his head. “Is this some kind of _ Pretty Woman _ thing? Because David you’re not—”

“No. It’s not— And what’s wrong with _ Pretty Woman_? It’s one of the quintessential— Nevermind, nevermind. Anyway,” he says pointedly, steering them away from what’s sure to be an argument. “I know you said that you haven’t, you know, kissed a guy before. And I just— If we’re gonna do _ this_, then I think you should save _ that_. For…” _ Ken, _ David thinks miserably. _ Someone who deserves it. Anyone but me. _ “...someone you actually want to kiss.” Patrick looks like he’s going to protest some more, so David rushes on. “It’s just that things get… messy. Or— Or complicated. And I just don’t want us to forget what we’re actually doing here.”

“Which is what, exactly?”

There’s a sharp edge to the look Patrick is giving him, and David doesn’t know what it means. Whatever it is, it doesn’t change the answer because there is only one thing this could ever be.

“Friends with a one-time-only benefit.”

Since his offer last night, David has thought a lot about Stevie and how they’d nearly fallen apart after their few hookups. He hadn’t really had a friend with benefits before that—not one who was really a friend anyway—and he hadn’t known how to navigate all that without either of them getting hurt. The kissing certainly wasn’t the only thing they’d done wrong, but it would have helped, he thinks. He can’t go through that with Patrick, what he went through with her. This time David would be the one left pining for more. He’d be the one to have to figure out how to put back together the pieces of his broken heart, and it would just be so much easier if he can avoid putting himself in the position of having it shattered in the first place. The ground rules for tonight should help with that, or so he hopes.

“Is that okay?”

Patrick just looks at him, softer again now, thoughtful, the same way he had back in the store before he’d said _ let’s sleep on it_, and David wonders if he’s going to back out now, if the reality of it has become too much. But finally he says, “Two rules. That’s it?” 

“That’s it.” It’s as simple and as incredibly complicated as that.

Patrick grabs up his glass again and quickly swigs down the rest of his wine. “Okay. Yes.” His gaze bounces from David to his bed on the far side of the room and back again. “How do we— Should we—”

If they’re really going to do this, David doesn’t want to rush. He remembers all the awkward, fumbling, not-always-so-great firsts that he’d experienced, and he doesn’t want that for Patrick. He feels like he owes it to Patrick to make this better than that. He wants to take care of him, and that means he wants to go slow. For Patrick’s sake, and maybe a little for his own.

“Come here,” he says, wriggling down until he can lie back against the arm of Patrick’s tiny sofa.

Patrick follows him willingly, sinking into David’s open arms, both of them shifting in the small space until Patrick’s head is resting comfortably on David’s shoulder, David’s arms wrapped around his back. At first, it’s hard to focus on anything except the violent beat of his own heart against his ribs and the desperate hope that Patrick can’t feel it. They’ve hugged before though, and this isn’t so different, he realizes, letting himself relax into it, rubbing his hands up and down the back of Patrick’s shirt. It’s soft—much softer than he would have expected considering the general quality of Patrick’s wardrobe—but he doesn’t say as much, just lets his hands make soothing motions up and down the planes of Patrick’s back, relieved when Patrick seems to sink even farther into him, his breath puffing warm and steady against David’s neck.

After several long, comfortable minutes, Patrick asks, voice barely more than a whisper, “Can I kiss you here?”

“Yes.”

So Patrick does, just a soft, dry brush of his mouth against the curve of David’s neck. It’s sweet and simple, and it shouldn’t tickle at the back of his throat the way it does. He swallows the feeling away and rolls his head to the side, making way for Patrick to pepper a line of chaste kisses up his neck, and when he reaches David’s jaw, he starts again on the other side, kissing from collarbone to ear. 

David hums out a little moan, trying to encourage him to take this from devastatingly sweet to something a little sexier, a little easier for David to handle, and Patrick takes the cue, the next kiss landing warm and wet on the tender patch of skin behind his ear. The moan that elicits is breathier and totally impromptu, his fingers digging harder into the shifting muscles of Patrick’s shoulders as he kisses across David’s cheek, lips rasping against his stubble. He trails his way to the corner of David’s mouth, and for a moment David thinks he’ll have to remind him of the rule—thinks maybe he’ll say fuck the rules and let Patrick kiss him stupid—but the next kiss lands on the other side of his lips, Patrick smirking as he makes his way across his other cheek, and David marvels that he’s just as much of a tease here as he is when they’re joking around at work.

The thought vanishes, however, as Patrick’s teeth graze his ear lobe. The choked noise that catches in David’s throat makes him try it again, harder this time, his breath hitching loud in David’s ear as David rolls his hips up against him. 

“Sorry,” David pants, but Patrick doesn’t seem upset about it at all, just does it again, biting at David’s ear, at his neck, at the hinge of his jaw, soothing each stinging nip with a hot, slick swipe of his tongue, rocking back down against David every time he rolls into him, letting David feel the growing hardness in his jeans. 

God, David can’t wait to get his hands on him, to get his mouth on him, but Patrick is too busy taking him apart, inch by well-kissed inch, and David’s a little afraid that if they keep going like this, he’ll end up coming in his pants right here on the sofa and they’ll never get to anything else tonight.

“Should we… move this… to the bed?” he asks between the hot, insistent press of Patrick’s lips.

Patrick nods into the line of David’s throat where he’s licking at his adam’s apple. “Yeah.” But he doesn’t move, and David has to laugh, getting his hands between them to nudge Patrick away.

“It’s hard to move when you’re still on top of me.”

He can feel Patrick’s answering chuckle all along the long line where their bodies are pressed together. “Okay, okay,” he says, finally tearing himself away from David’s neck and offering him a hand up off the sofa to lead him across the room.

David pauses at the foot of the bed, taking a seat on the chest there to unlace his shoes and breathe away some of the wild fluttering in his chest. He risks a look up at Patrick to find him watching, some unknowable look in his eyes, and David tells him, “You can, um, take your shirt off. If you want.” 

It’s something he would honestly prefer to do himself, his fingers aching with desire. He wants to draw it out, to slowly slip each button free of its hole. To brush across each and every inch of skin as it appears. To slide his hands up under the fabric, over the firm planes of Patrick’s chest until he can push the shirt from his shoulders. He wants it so badly it burns in the back of his throat like acid, but tonight isn’t about that kind of intimacy. He can’t expect Patrick to give him that.

So Patrick can take off his own shirt. And as he starts to unroll the cuffs of his sleeves, David has to look away, clench his fingers against the temptation to help. Instead, he removes his shoes and then his sweater and the tee underneath, folding them carefully and leaving them in a tidy stack there on the chest.

With another deep breath, he stands, pulling himself up tall as Patrick’s gaze finds him, raking down the length of him and up again. David keeps his eyes on Patrick’s face, letting him look as long as he likes, trying not to squirm. 

And then Patrick is there against him, one hand on the rise of his hip, the other tugging at the fragile curve of his neck. David thinks Patrick is going to kiss him some more, but instead he just brushes their cheeks together, stubble scraping against stubble, breath puffing heavy at his ear as he holds David close, their chests rising and falling against one another. 

The feeling of it tingles at the corners of David’s eyes. 

It’s unbearable.

“Bed,” he chokes out, forcing himself to break the moment. “Get on the bed.”

Patrick drags him down to the mattress with him, and David gets himself on top, regaining some semblance of control as he settles carefully across Patrick’s thighs, allowing himself enough space to breathe so that he can focus again. 

“Can I touch you?” he asks, and Patrick nods eagerly. 

With Patrick’s gaze heavy on his every movement, he traces his fingers across the soft stretch of Patrick’s belly, up through the sparse, fine hair scattered across his chest. He drags his fingers along the hard curves of his biceps and the thick veins in his forearms, the ticklish rise of his ribs and the sensitive peaks of his nipples. He touches him all over, building himself a topographic map of Patrick’s body that he can keep when all of this is done, and only once he’s satisfied that his fingers will remember every dip and every rise does he bend down to kiss him.

Patrick’s breath comes harder as David gets his mouth on his shoulders and his neck, on the mottled splotches of heat just starting to blossom across his chest. Patrick is quiet as a mouse, but as David draws the edge of his teeth over one pink, pebbled nipple, his breath hitches beautifully, his head rolling back as he arches more insistently against David’s mouth. So he does it to the other, too, fluttering his tongue back and forth across the tip of it and then pulling back to blow light and cool across it, watching it harden before sucking it back between his lips.

As he starts to move down Patrick’s stomach, he can feel the growing tension there, the muscles tight and trembling beneath his lips, and Patrick’s fists clench at the sheets at his sides.

“Hey,” David says, lifting one fisted hand to his mouth. He presses kisses across Patrick’s fingers, willing each one to loosen, before turning it over to nip at his wrist and drop another gentle kiss to the center of his palm. He repeats the whole process on the other hand. “Is this okay? We can stop if you—”

“No! It’s. It’s good. I just didn’t realize—” Patrick shakes his head, eyes squeezed closed, whatever he was going to say getting lost in the movement.

“Relax.” David smoothes his hands in soft, wide circles over Patrick’s belly. “I’ve got you, okay?” He drops a kiss just above his belly button. “I’ve got you,” he says again, and he’s never meant anything more in his life. “Here, roll on your side.”

They shift until they’re lying across from one another, facing each other across the pillows. There’s still some kind of hesitance lingering in Patrick’s eyes, something overwhelmed and uncertain. It’s such a striking contrast to the confidence with which Patrick normally carries himself, even to the certainty he’d had earlier on the sofa, kissing David to within an inch of his life. David wants to help him find that again.

“It’s okay to be nervous, but… it’s not all that different between guys and girls honestly.” He sweeps a hand softly up and down Patrick’s side in what he hopes is a comforting motion. The last thing he wants is to seem like he’s patronizing him—Patrick’s an adult, he’s had sex, he knows how the general process works. David just wants to reassure him that he already knows what he’s doing. “Gender doesn’t change the concept. It’s basically the same as any other sex you’ve had. You figure out what your partner likes. What _ you _like. What you both like. And you go with it. The rest is… details.”

Patrick nods just a little, his face softening. “Okay.”

David keeps rubbing up and down his side until he looks more relaxed again and then draws a finger in a line up Patrick’s sternum to brush it softly against his mouth. “I mean, some people really like kissing.” 

Those lips curve into a tiny smile and close briefly around the pad of his finger. The pleased little sound that escapes David’s mouth seems to encourage Patrick to do it again, and he slips his tongue out this time to circle it around the tip. David watches him greedily for a moment before remembering the task at hand.

“And some people like it when you play with their nipples.” He circles that wet fingertip around one of Patrick’s before pinching it lightly, relishing the soft groan he gets in response. “Some people want to be teased.”

Patrick’s breath shakes as David’s fingers ghost down his stomach, raising goosebumps in their wake. He traces the button on Patrick’s jeans, around and around and around in maddening little circles, so close to where Patrick is straining against his fly, yet so far. 

“And some people like to go straight for—”

A hand stops his before he can press it against the clothed outline of Patrick’s cock. “And what do you like?” Patrick asks, dragging his hand back up to his lips.

“It’s not about me.” His voice rises at the end as Patrick pulls a finger all the way into his mouth, like he wants to show that he’s paying attention, that he’s noticed what his mouth does to David.

“Isn’t it though?” he asks when he draws off again, working his way across David’s palm, his wrist, down the inside of his forearm. “You said it yourself. It’s about what your partner likes. What we _ both _ like.” Those dark, piercing eyes find his, pinning him there in the lamplight. “So what do you like, David?”

“I meant when— when you do this for real.”

A crease forms across Patrick’s brow again. “Is this not real?” To punctuate his point, he drags his teeth across the tender skin inside of David’s elbow, and David squirms. Of course this isn’t real, no matter how badly David might want it to be.

“You know what I mean. When you do this with...” He swallows thickly, the words scratching at his throat. ”With other guys.”

The huff of breath that escapes Patrick’s mouth sounds frustrated, and he drops his forehead against David’s shoulder. “David.”

David knows he’s being difficult. He knows it. But he has to be. It’s a reminder that he needs for himself. This isn’t real. He’s here to do this for Patrick, and that’s all this is. That’s all it will ever be. He has to remind himself of it so he doesn’t make this into more than it is and break his own god damn heart.

“Look,” Patrick says, leaning away again until he can look David in the eye. “I know you’re just doing this to— to help me, but… is it so bad for me to want you to enjoy yourself? I mean, it’s kind of the point, right? For both people to enjoy it?”

It takes everything in David not to laugh. As if he’s never had sex he didn’t enjoy. But it’s sweet that Patrick’s the kind of guy who cares about that. If David had slept with a few more people like that in his younger days, perhaps he wouldn’t be here now, in bed with a man he has some kind of tangled up feelings for but will never be able to tell, pretending that this is all for fun, that there’s any chance he’ll get out of this unhurt.

“Sorry. You’re— you’re right.”

The smile Patrick gives him is so gentle that David isn’t entirely sure what to do with it. He wants to kiss it, to breathe it in and take it with him when he goes. He shouldn’t. It’s his own rule, not that that’s necessarily stopped him before, but it’s terribly tempting, to kiss that look right off of his face. But then a corner of Patrick’s mouth quirks back into something flirtier, and the moment is gone. “So. What do you like, David?”

_ You. _

“I,” David replies, burying the truth beneath a twisty smirk as he reaches again for the button on Patrick’s jeans and pops it loose, “like sucking cock.” As much as he’s enjoying taking this slowly, at some point they also have to actually get down to it, and now is as good a time as any. He tugs at Patrick’s zip, threatening to pull it down as he watches those familiar eyes grow wider and darker. “Is that something you’d like, too?”

Patrick licks his lips and nods, jittery and quick, and then they’re both working his jeans and boxers down, nearly knocking heads as they push them down over the ample curve of his ass until David can drag them off. 

The sight of Patrick bared before him takes his breath away. He hadn’t really taken the time to appreciate the view much before now, but he’s all compact muscle and fine hair and flushed skin, hard and soft in all the right places. He’s gorgeous, with a thick, rosy cock that David wants desperately to suck straight down his throat just to see how fast he can make him come. 

He manages not to give in to the temptation.

Instead, he settles himself between Patrick’s beautiful, sturdy thighs, wondering what it would feel like to have them squeezed around his head, wondering whether there’s anything he could do tonight that would let him find out.

“Can I touch your thighs?” he asks because even though they’ve been touching each other for a while now, he wants Patrick to feel comfortable saying no if he wants to. He wants him to know that he can.

As soon as Patrick says yes though, David’s hands are on him, nails raking up and down the well-muscled length of his thighs. They’re solid and strong, and he bets Patrick could ride him for hours, could maybe even lift him up against the wall and fuck him standing. He presses his mouth into the meat of one, bites down into it to muffle the whimper that slips out just thinking about it, and Patrick writhes against the sensation until David covers it with kisses, pressing them up and into the crease of his hip and then shifting to do the same on the other side.

“Can I…” He clears his throat. Never in a million years would he have thought he’d be asking this of his business partner, but he’s not going to shy away from the opportunity now. “Can I touch your cock?”

The answer is more breath than word, but it’s enough. David starts with a finger, dragging it softly along the length from base to tip, watching it twitch at his touch. He traces it along the vein on the underside, around the fat, pink head of it, up across the slick, wet slit, and down to the base again. By the time he wraps his hand properly around it and gives him a few rough tugs, some of that tension has built in Patrick’s muscles again, his legs flexing against David’s sides. 

“Hey,” David says. “Remember. I’ve got you.” His free hand finds one of Patrick’s where it’s fisted in the sheets again, and Patrick immediately tangles their fingers together, leaving David staring dumbly at them for a moment before he can shake off the surprise of it. “Just breathe, okay? I haven’t killed anyone during sex before, and I don’t intend to start tonight.”

Patrick’s laughter shakes the bed around them, and his thighs fall open a little wider, his whole body relaxing along with them. “Okay,” he says after several slow breaths, letting go of David’s hand. “Okay. I’m— I’m okay. I’m good.”

“Good. Because I’d really like to suck you now, if that’s okay with you.”

Patrick pushes eagerly up onto his elbows, looking down the line of his body to where David’s waiting.

“Can I?”

“Please.”

David angles his head so that he can keep eye contact with Patrick as he sucks him down slowly, taking him in inch by inch until his mouth is comfortably full, watching as the shock and the pleasure of it register on Patrick’s face in turn. He pulls back off just as slowly and sinks down again, trying to memorize every tiny flicker of emotion, every hitch of breath, every flutter of an eyelid.

After every few bobs of his head, he pulls off entirely, giving them both a few seconds to breathe before he bends to it again. But as he sets up a rhythm, he stops less and less, his eyes falling shut as he loses himself in the pleasure of the act. Because David wasn’t lying; he loves this. The weight of Patrick’s cock on his tongue. The aching fullness of it in his mouth. The heat and the salt and the softness over all that glorious hardness. The twitch of Patrick’s thighs against his shoulders as he tries and fails not to move. The way every breath he draws in is Patrick Patrick Patrick.

It’s a surprise then, when a hand finds his cheek, brushing gently against the stretch of his jaw. David’s eyes flutter open, finding Patrick watching him still as his fingers brush over his cheek, so he tilts his head, letting Patrick feel out the shape of his own cockhead in David’s mouth.

“Fuck,” he breathes, and David pulls off grinning, proud to have already brought his generally clean-mouthed business partner to the point of swearing.

“Like that?”

“Yeah. Yes.” So he does it again, and again once more, revelling in the way Patrick’s chest rises and falls a little harder with each press of his fingers to David’s cheek.

“Something else _ I _ like...” he says when he comes up again for air, and Patrick’s face lights up, like he’s being given a gift. “...are hands in my hair.”

“Yeah?” His hand slides up, cautiously, into the thick of David’s hair, just carding softly through it. It’s nice, but it’s bordering on too soft, too real, and David has to shake away the feeling.

“Pull,” he corrects, “just a little,” and he sucks Patrick all the way down. The fingers in his hair tighten deliciously at the surprise of it, and David hums in pleasure around him, which gets him a little thrust of Patrick’s hips. _ That _ is exactly what he’s looking for, so he hums again, happy when Patrick takes the hint and gently fucks up into his mouth. God, it’s perfect. Patrick is perfect. Between the delicious stretch of David’s jaw, the hand tugging at his hair, and the soft rolls of Patrick’s hips, David swears he could nearly come like this, and he grinds down against the mattress, seeking to relieve a little of the pressure.

“God, David. You— Stop. Please stop.”

He stills immediately, pulling off and looking up at Patrick in concern. The hand in his hair goes all gentle again, fingers scrubbing softly at his scalp, while Patrick’s other arm is thrown across his eyes where he’s collapsed back into his pillow. “Everything okay?” The question comes out far smaller and more tentative than he would like.

But Patrick huffs out a single, breathy laugh, which David takes as a reassuring sign. “You’re—” is all he gets out before he’s laughing some more, the sound of it just tipping toward hysterical. Finally he manages to shake out an answer. “This is the best blow job I’ve had in my life.”

That’s not entirely unexpected, but David preens about it all the same. “Then why are we stopping exactly?”

“I don’t. I don’t wanna come yet. I want to—” He leans back up onto his elbows where David can see the determination on his face as he asks. “Can we switch? I’d like to, you know, try it on you. If you’d like that.”

“Yeah,” David says. “Yeah, if you— If that’s what you want.”

“That’s what I want.”

David drops a quick kiss to Patrick’s hip and clambers back up to his own pillow, where Patrick moves to straddle his thighs. He hesitates then, and David thinks about how well he’s responded to being told what David likes, how his uncertainty seems to grow when he thinks about what he wants for himself instead. 

“Will you touch me?” he asks, and that gets Patrick moving again, his hands everywhere, his mouth everywhere, ribs and stomach and nipples and neck, everywhere—everywhere—like David had done to him, like he’s cataloguing all the things that David likes, memorizing every line and curve and dip of his body, too. In reality, David knows it’s probably just that Patrick is following the example he’d set first, but it’s nicer to pretend that he cares about it, that he wants to know the same way David wanted to know, that he wants to keep it somehow, these secret maps they’ve built of each other in the lamplight.

His fingers find the button on David’s jeans on their own, seemingly more confident now that David’s asked him for this. Unlike the mad scramble to get off his own clothes, Patrick takes his time with it, and David’s happy to let him, relishing the slick kisses Patrick drags across his stomach as he pops the button and drags down the zip. The way he peels the denim down as if unwrapping a present, baring David’s legs inch by inch.

He’s worn his softest, tightest, most expensive pair of trunks tonight, and he loves that Patrick stops to appreciate them, desire sparkling in his eyes as they take in the way the fabric stretches across his hipbones, over the hard bulge of his cock. His gaze comes up to find David’s then, and David nods, watching Patrick’s fingers slip under the waistband and peel them carefully off.

When he finally looks down at David bare in his bed, the moment seems to stretch out toward eternity, the two of them here together with nothing between them but the unspoken truth. 

Some weighty sound catches in the back of Patrick’s throat, and David latches on to it, desperate to hold it, to keep it, this one sound, as a lasting reminder of this night. Even when he has nothing else, he’ll have this. He’ll have this, and it’ll be enough. It’ll have to be.

“Touch me,” he pleads when he can’t bear the weight of the moment any longer. “Please.”

Patrick presses a single, soft kiss to the center of David’s chest before he moves between his thighs, and David is certain he’s going to crack in two. But Patrick manages to hold him together, his sturdy hands coming up to squeeze at David’s hips as he noses down the dark, tidy trail of hair on his stomach. He kisses him there, too, scattering a delicate series of them across David’s skin like whispered words until David is on the verge of begging him to stop—stop being so fucking gentle, so sweet, like it’s not going to absolutely destroy him that he doesn’t get to have this forever.

But finally, _ finally_, those kisses make their way down, across his hips and over the tops of his thighs, until Patrick can drop one right at the base of David’s cock. The kisses up the length of it are blessedly less sweet—hot, wet presses of his mouth from base to tip where he slips his lips down over the head, and David sighs with relief.

“Slow,” he breathes, “Go slow,” for his own sake as much as Patrick’s.

And Patrick does, sinking down slowly as far as he can take, pulling off again slower, letting David savor every single inch of the slide in and back out. He adjusts his angle each time he sucks him down again, always where he can still see David’s face as he does it, giving a satisfied hum each time he succeeds in taking him a little deeper, David encouraging him with his own moans and scattered words.

It’s good. A little awkward, but good. And getting better with every tiny adjustment Patrick makes. Which David soon realises is the problem with having such an immensely capable business partner. He’s a quick study, pays attention to details, and doesn’t like to be wrong, all of which means that in a matter of minutes, he’s figured out exactly what David likes, sucking him in those long, slow pulls, cheeks hollowed with the perfect amount of pressure, tongue flicking out to lick hard at his slit whenever he pulls off to breathe, and David is well on his way to just lying back and enjoying himself before he remembers that he’s supposed to be helping.

“You can, ngh, use your hand, too,” he pants out, “if you want. Like. Like an extension of your mouth. So you don’t have to… go too deep.” 

Patrick does exactly that, wrapping his hand around David’s cock, stroking him in tandem with the movement of his mouth.

“And if you have to pull off. To breathe. Keep— keep moving your hand.”

There’s a hum of acknowledgment, the vibration of it shaking straight into David’s core, and the next time Patrick comes up for air he does as David advises, his hand still moving slick and tight over David’s cock, before wrapping his lips around him once more. 

It’s so fucking good, even more so because it’s Patrick’s lips, Patrick’s hand, Patrick’s moans of pleasure around a mouthful of his cock. “Twist your hand. Just a lit— Fuck.” All the air seems to vanish from the room, the vacuum of it squeezing hard around his lungs. “St-stop,” he gasps, just before he can reach the point of too far gone.

Once he manages to drag in a single, shuddering breath, he looks down to find Patrick looking up at him, that pretty, wet mouth of his tilted in a cocky smirk. David hates him. (Far from it.) He collapses back into the pillows thinking about horrible things like taxes and the cafe’s smoothies and holes in his favorite sweaters as he tries to catch his breath.

“So I take it that was terrible?” Patrick asks, settling back in on the other pillow, and David doesn’t have to open his eyes to know that he looks smug as hell. He peeks out from under his heavy eyelids to confirm it, and Patrick is there giving him that same knowing smile he had the day David had barged in to work to yell at him for sending a giant cookie to the motel to celebrate the store’s four month anniversary.

“Don’t fish for compliments. That’s my job.”

Patrick’s answering laugh is clear, bright, and warm as sunshine, and David wishes once again that it could just be like this. Wishes _ they _could be like this, all the time, laughing and relaxed and familiar. He wonders if there’s a universe somewhere out there where they are, where they’re together for real. It makes him feel a little less sad to think that there is. That there’s a David who exists in some other time and place who gets to have all of this for himself. That there’s a David who gets to be happy.

“So,” Patrick says, interrupting his private little pity party when it’s gone on too long, “what now?” He reaches across to rake his nails softly through the hair on David’s chest, and David shivers at the touch.

“Mmm, I think that’s up to you. I told you what I liked. What’s on your list?”

His hand stills for a moment before moving again. “I don’t have a list.”

“You don’t have things you want to try before your big date?” David can’t quite keep the skepticism out of his voice. At least this conversation is doing a good job of bringing him back from the edge of his orgasm.

“I don’t—” Patrick shakes his head, and there’s a hint of that frustration again, wrinkling its way across his face until he can smooth it away. “There’s not some kind of checklist here, David. This isn’t about ticking as many boxes as I can.”

_ Isn’t it? _ David thinks. “So there’s nothing in particular you want?”

“No, I just thought—” His mouth goes all pinched, like he’s physically holding himself back from finishing the sentence. 

“You thought…?”

Patrick sighs, the sound of it heavy in the little space between them, but the corners of his mouth turn up at the end in a clearly forced attempt to lighten the mood. “Can I have some options maybe?”

David wants to know what Patrick was originally going to say, but he hasn’t exactly been a paragon of honesty tonight either, so he can’t really push him on it. He lets it go instead, following Patrick’s lead and letting things shift and lighten again. 

“Well,” he says, thinking of things he likes and things he doesn’t. Things Patrick might like. Things he wants but shouldn’t. Things he can’t have and things he can. “We could, um, give each other handjobs. Or just go back to blowjobs. We could 69.” He clears his throat. It’s not like he’s ever been shy about sex, but offering his business partner a veritable menu of sexual options is a new experience to say the least. “You could finger me, or I could— I could finger you. You could fuck my thighs, or…”

“Could we, uh,” Patrick starts, a beautiful blush rising in his cheeks, David watching delightedly as it blooms down his neck and onto his chest. “Could we do something… face-to-face?” His hand rises until he can brush a thumb across David’s cheek. “I just. I want to see you.”

It’s David’s turn to blush. Patrick can’t possibly mean that the tender way it sounds, but god David wishes that he did. “Yeah, okay,” he says, thinking quickly through some options. “Do you have lube? If not, there’s some in my bag.”

Patrick snakes a hand under his pillow and comes out with a small bottle. David should have known; he’s always prepared, like a damn scout.

“You know we sell organic lube in our store, right?” David asks as he plucks the drugstore brand bottle from Patrick’s palm and flicks the cap open. “You don’t have to buy whatever this is.”

“Do you really want to talk about my lube choices right now?” Patrick asks as he watches David drizzle a little pool of it on his own belly anyway. He shivers a bit at the cool feeling of it against his skin and a bit more when he sees the banked heat shimmering in Patrick’s eyes.

“I’m just saying, why would you settle when you have access to the good stuff?” He wriggles his hips a bit to make his point, and Patrick chuckles. But then David drags his fingers through the puddle of lube and wraps them around his cock, getting it good and wet, rocking his hips into it and maybe giving Patrick just a little bit of a show, and neither of them is laughing anymore. “Get over here.” He spreads his thighs in invitation, and Patrick wastes no time getting between them, his chest rising and falling in time with every pull of David’s wrist. “Gimme your hand,” David says and tips a little more lube into Patrick’s open palm. “Stroke yourself for me. Get yourself nice and slick.”

Patrick hurries to comply, wrapping his hand around himself and matching David’s speed, his eyes falling closed every time he thumbs over the head of his cock, mouth dropping open a little when David speeds up and Patrick quickens his pace to match. 

“God, okay,” David says before they get too carried away. “Now wrap your hand around both of us”—he helps guide Patrick’s hand just where he wants it—”and slide that beautiful cock of yours right against mine.” 

Patrick pulls back just an inch or two and rocks forward again. A surprised little “oh” puffs out of his mouth as David hums in pleasure. “Like that?” Patrick asks.

“Just like that,” David says, focusing on the sensation of it, arching up into it. Patrick keeps the pace slow—maddeningly, achingly slow—eyes wide and hungry as he watches them slide against one another. It’s so much, each movement deliberate and careful, like each roll of Patrick’s hips has been expertly crafted to drive David toward madness. “More,” he urges. “I need. I need more.”

“Yeah?” Patrick asks, a glittering hint of disbelief in the question, like he doesn’t know. Like he has no idea how absolutely gorgeous he is right now with his skin flushed clear down to his belly button, his stomach slick and shining with sweat, his chest heaving with the effort of making David—slowly, carefully—lose his entire fucking mind. 

God, David wants to taste him, wants to breathe him in, wants to keep him just like this forever.

“Please.”

Patrick wipes his slick hand across his belly and leans down over him, letting David roll his hips up against the weight of him, and fuck, that’s so much better. So, so much better now that David can thrust back against him, their cocks sliding together between them. David gets his legs wrapped around Patrick’s thighs and his hands on that beautiful ass, urging him on, pulling him closer with every thrust, and then Patrick wraps his arms under David’s shoulders, holding him even tighter, and David could cry. It’s incredible. Messy and inelegant and so fucking incredible. 

They thrust against each other in a broken rhythm, Patrick mouthing at the stretch of David’s neck, his collarbones, the sensitive skin beneath his jaw. Those lips find his cheek, kissing their way down from his ear to the corner of his mouth again, then Patrick is pulling away to watch David’s face for a moment before starting once more on the other side. He does it again, and he does it again, kissing and looking, unbearably close, close enough to see everything that David’s hiding, and still he keeps looking anyway, like maybe he wants to see it, like maybe _ is this not real _ and _ what do you like _ and _ I want to see you _ weren’t just words, like maybe, just maybe, Patrick actually meant them. Like he wants this just as much as David does.

“Can I—” Patrick’s gaze drops to his mouth, just long enough for him to understand. “David, can I kiss you?”

“Please.” There’s the smallest hesitation, like he wants David to be sure. “Patrick, kiss me.”

His mouth is hot and slick and perfect when it presses against David’s, all curling tongue and heavy breath, and he groans into it like he’s dying, the feeling ringing in David’s chest like carillon bells. It’s everything. It’s everything, and it’s perfect, and it’s too much, and David loves him. He loves him. He _ loves _ him.

Thumbs are swiping across his cheeks, inexplicably wet, and Patrick is whispering against his mouth. “I’ve got you,” he says. “I’ve got you.”

Patrick’s got him. Patrick’s not going to let him go. David grabs hard onto his shoulders and kisses him again, kisses him with everything he’s got, Patrick’s rhythm faltering as he spills hot and wet between them, gasping against David’s lips, and that’s all that it takes. David comes so hard he feels like he’s drowning, like he’s sinking under the blue, rolling weight of the ocean, the last words on his dying lips _ Patrick Patrick Patrick Patrick_.

*

“Holy shit.” Patrick’s laugh shakes David’s entire body, and it’s perfect, the warm, comforting weight of him, the way it presses all that joy down into David’s bones like it were his own. 

“Mmmm,” is all David can manage in response. He’s cosy and satisfied and perfectly content to stay just like this for the foreseeable future.

But then Patrick is rolling away, off to the other side of the bed, leaving David grumbling and grasping after him. He peels an eye open to glare at him, but Patrick is looking down at his own stomach, then David’s stomach, then the bed, grimacing a little. “We made quite the mess.”

David burrows deeper into the pillow. “Next time we’ll put down a towel.”

There’s a horrible silence that follows, in which David realizes what he’s just said, and his eyes pop open to find Patrick’s face mirroring the horror now squeezing at his own lungs. 

“I meant, you should— when you— tomorrow—”

“Yeah.” Patrick laughs, but it’s cold and hollow and so very wrong. “Tomorrow. I-I’ll keep that in mind.”

Ugh, David has fucked this up colossally. “I’m just gonna—” He gestures toward Patrick’s bathroom and disappears into it as quickly as he can.

Fuck.

He bends over the sink, willing his arms and legs to keep holding him up so he doesn’t collapse right here on the floor in shame. This is exactly what he didn’t want to happen. He wasn’t supposed to let himself get carried away. That’s why he set ground rules up front. Patrick shouldn’t have—

No.

No, he can’t blame Patrick for kissing him. He asked; David didn’t have to say yes. Didn’t have to practically beg him to do it. And besides, it’s not like he wasn’t losing himself in the fantasy of it all long before that.

What did he think, that if the sex was good enough maybe Patrick would actually want him? That if he wanted it badly enough, pretended hard enough, then Patrick would suddenly love him? That’s not how life works. That’s not how love works. David’s experience with it has certainly been limited, but he’s got enough experience to know that.

He finds a couple washcloths and lets the water from the tap run warm. Once he’s wiped down his stomach and dropped the towel in the hamper in the corner, he wets the other for Patrick, risking a glance at his own pale face in the mirror. He looks miserable, though it’s only about half as bad as he feels. He tries pasting on a smile, but it looks horrid and forced, and he settles for at least trying not to cry before he gets home.

Patrick is lingering by the sofa when he opens the door, and it’s a relief honestly, not having to get back into bed with him, not having to lie next to him pressing together the fractured pieces of his own heart in an effort to hide the cracks. 

“Here.” David tries to hand him the washcloth as he passes by, but Patrick catches his wrist instead. His grip is horribly gentle, and David hates it. Hates that Patrick is treating him like the fragile thing that he is. Hates that he knows now—he’d watched David cry for fuck’s sake—and is trying to let him down easy.

“Are you okay?”

David settles all of his expressive features into the most carefully neutral mask he can manage before he meets Patrick’s gaze. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

Patrick looks at him so long it hurts, but finally he lets David go—”Okay”— and disappears into the bathroom. By the time he comes out, David is dressed and tying his shoes, and Patrick slips the robe hanging on the bathroom door over his shoulders, tying the belt up in a neat bow.

“I should head home,” David says before Patrick can open his mouth. He grabs up his bag and steps steadily toward the door, Patrick trailing silently behind him like a shadow.

As David’s hand finds the door knob, Patrick asks, “Can we talk tomorrow?”

David’s heart throbs painfully in his chest. He knows what that means, and dread wells up black and turbid in his stomach. He blinks hard against the prickling in the corners of his eyes before he finally turns around, the words sour in his throat. “We can talk whenever you’d like.”

Tears are already burning on his cheeks by the time he makes it to the stairs.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for the wealth of lovely comments you've left so far. I didn't get a chance to reply to the latest round before posting this, but please know that I saw and appreciated every single one.
> 
> Hope you like the ending just as much. <3

Friday is the slowest day they’ve had at Rose Apothecary in months. It’s as if the entire town is conspiring with David’s anxiety to make him feel as wretched as possible.

Normally he doesn’t mind having a slow day now and then. It gives him time to catch up on updating their vendor files, to seek out potential new products, to draw up plans for seasonal displays. When it happens on a day when he’s here with Patrick, they take turns playing music over the store’s speakers, too, joking about each other’s taste (or lack thereof).

But today, the dearth of customers means David is left here alone with his thoughts, and all of his thoughts are on Patrick. That isn’t entirely new, but the dank feeling of dread that accompanies them is an unwelcome addition. 

When he’d made it home last night, he’d been grateful to discover that Alexis was at least spending the night at Ted’s: a minor miracle that allowed him to wallow in peace. He’d had a good cry in the shower and then another good cry in bed, and then he’d begged his guilt-addled brain to shut up long enough for him to fall asleep and cried again when that had proven impossible. 

And so he’d gotten up at five, finally giving up on sleep entirely. 

It should have at least given him the luxury of extra time with his skin care routine, but when he’d gotten a glimpse of the dark circles under his eyes, still ghastly and sad even after dabbing on a bit of Alexis’s good concealer, he’d given up the whole thing as a bad job. Throwing on the closest sweatshirt to hand, a comfy Neil Barrett with a big, white lightning bolt streaked across the front that would perhaps serve as a warning to anyone wanting to bother him today, he’d come in to work extra early, moped around the sales floor, tidied and organized all the displays, and just generally hung around feeling sorry for himself. The one and only customer who had come in shortly after he’d unlocked the door had seemed concerned by his appearance, eventually leaving without buying anything, and David couldn’t really bring himself to care.

So here he is now, miserable and alone, his own store mocking him with silence. He should get used to it because once Patrick starts dating _Ken_, this is probably going to be his permanent state of existence. They’re going to run off and live a happy, fulfilling, David-free life together, and he’ll be left here on his own trying to figure out how to keep from running the store straight into the ground.

The worst part of the whole thing is that it’s a problem of his own making. He could have avoided all of it if he had just managed to keep his mouth shut and not offered to sleep with his business partner.  _ Who even does that? _ Things had been going along just fine. His crush on Patrick was only that—well-hidden and manageable—and he’d been comfortable in the knowledge that it would never be any more.

But now.

Now he knows the brush of Patrick’s fingers on his skin. Now he knows the way his eyelashes flutter with pleasure, the way his back arches with need. Now he knows the heat and the shape and the taste of his mouth. 

Now he has the tiniest fragment of a hint of what it would be like to be loved by Patrick, and he doesn’t know how he’s supposed to go back to living without it. He doesn’t know how to pretend that it isn’t what he wants, even though he knows it’s what he can’t have.

And the  _ actual  _ worst part is that now Patrick knows, too. He can’t not know. Because David had fucked up and let himself get lost in the fantasy.  _ We’ll put down a towel next time.  _ He’d forgotten, just for a second, that there will be no next time. That Patrick’s next time and all the times after that are reserved for someone else. 

Between that slip-up and the tears and all but begging Patrick to kiss him, he’s honestly shocked Patrick didn’t call off their business partnership right then and there. But no, he’s the polite kind of person who wouldn’t do that in bed; instead he’s a  _ can we talk tomorrow? _ kind of guy, and David has never in his life dreaded a conversation more. Everyone knows that “talk” is relationship code for break up, and David’s certainly been through enough of them. But the  _ worst _ , worst part is that there’s not even a romantic or sexual relationship to break up. Only a friendship. A business partnership. And still he knows that it will devastate him more than any actual break-up he’s been through before. Even Sebastien and the year of  _ Bridget Jones’s Diary  _ is going to pale in comparison to this.

And the absolute, honest-to-god worst part—and  _ yes  _ David knows that it can’t all be the worst part, except that it can because every single thing about this situation is the undeniable worst thing that’s ever happened in his life, which is saying something considering how he ended up in this fucking town in the first place—is that some tiny, selfish, idiotic part of David doesn’t even regret it. He was never going to have Patrick any other way, and so even if it ruins everything else, at least he has this one night. 

God, he’s fucked up. No wonder Patrick isn’t interested in him. Who would be?

When the clock finally limps its way into lunchtime and David gets bored of his own pathetic agony, he flips the sign on the door to closed, contemplating venturing across the street to the cafe just to have something else to do, though the mere thought of food turns his stomach. Before he can decide, however, there’s the chime of an incoming text, and he looks at it automatically, blanching when he sees Patrick’s name on the screen.

_ I’m sorry about last night. _

There it is. 

Patrick regrets it. He wants to take it back, but they both know that they can’t. What’s done is done, and this is the beginning of the end.

It hurts. He’d known it would, but that doesn’t make it any easier. Tears well up in his eyes, hot and fast, and he stumbles jelly-legged into the back to collapse on the sofa before they start to spill over. Sobs heave their way up from his chest, and he curls himself up as small as possible and just lets them come. 

He deserves it—he’s the worst, after all.

*

It’s dark long before David gets up again. 

Some time after the tears stop—he isn’t exactly sure when that happens, each miserable moment of this day flowing indecipherably into the next—he looks around to find that the sun has set, the lights out on the sales floor spilling into the cocoon of darkness surrounding him. A glance at his phone confirms that hours have passed and it’s now well past closing time.

Patrick’s text still sits there unanswered.

_ I’m sorry about last night. _

How exactly is he supposed to respond to that? Does Patrick expect that David can just wave it all away somehow?  _ No big deal. Sorry for fucking you and kissing you and letting you see just how much I wish you wanted me instead of Ken and his stupid hair and his megawatt smiles that could light up a city block. _ He’s not even sure he could if he tried; it turns out he’s not that great of an actor, if last night is anything to go on.

Unsure if it’s better to ask Patrick to put him out of his misery now or to drag it all out as long as possible, David decides—irony of ironies—to sleep on it. He’ll go back to the motel, see if he’s got a mask that might make a dent in these bags under his eyes, maybe have a glass of wine, or a bottle, or three, and deal with Patrick tomorrow. Maybe he’ll even get lucky and Alexis will be at Ted’s again, and he can have another sleepless night without an audience. 

Before he can peel himself off the sofa to enact his plan, there’s a knock at the front door. It’s probably Bob or Roland or any of a number of other nosy residents coming to see if the lights still on in the store mean they can weasel their way into a discount, and David shuffles out of the back with a sigh.

The sight that greets him, however, is not an over-eager customer. 

It’s Patrick.

Because of course it is.

He’s clearly dressed for his date, a navy blazer over a pale blue button-up, and he’s so beautiful standing there in the hazy light of the streetlamps that David has to drag back down the whimper already clawing its way out of his too-tight throat.

Despite his dread, he manages to put one foot in front of another and cross the room, brushing his fingers through the mess that is his hair. There’s nothing he can do about his face—he looks like shit and he knows it—but it’s better than nothing. He unlocks the door with trembling hands, the cool night air that flows in when he opens it doing little to calm his jangling nerves. 

On the other side, Patrick is looking up at him with those big, dark eyes, and if circumstances were different, David would let himself fall into them. Instead, he simply steps back to let Patrick inside. If they’re going to have this talk, it would be better to at least do it with a door between them and the prying ears of the rest of the town.

When Patrick closes the door and turns toward him, David’s heart crawls up into his throat, but Patrick’s gaze doesn’t stop there—it brushes past him, over counters and shelves, scanning, searching for something perhaps, though David can’t imagine what. Maybe just looking, taking it all in one last time so that he can remember it the way it is now before it all comes crumbling down around them.

“Why are you here?” David asks when the silence has gone on too long. They might as well get on with it. “I thought you had a date.” He’s proud that the words come out as steady as they do.

Patrick’s eyes snap back to him, and now that they’re in the light, he looks nearly as exhausted as David feels. “You didn’t reply to my text, and I…” He takes a deep breath. “I thought we should talk.”

_ Why bother? _ David thinks. He’s resigned to his fate now. This is the end, and it’s frankly what he deserves. But Patrick deserves to say what he’s come to say, too. David can at least give him that. “Okay.”

Patrick stands up a little taller, putting a little steel in his spine. “I wanted to apologize. For last night.”

Oh. “No, you don’t have to—”

“I think I do,” he interrupts, his voice just hard enough to stop David short. “David, you left my apartment crying, and that’s— that’s my fault. I shouldn’t have—”

“No, no, no, no.” Patrick’s got it all wrong. This is almost worse than the truth; he’s made Patrick feel guilty for something he didn’t even do. David talks over him, each of them trying to bear the brunt of the blame. “That’s not your— I was just—”

“No, you only asked for two rules, and…”

“It was just, like, an adrenaline thing. That, uh, that happens…”

“...I couldn’t even— I shouldn’t have kissed you. It was…”

“....sometimes. And the kiss was. It was nothing. It was fine, just a…”

“...unfair of me to even ask, and obviously I upset you, so I’m sorry.”

“...heat of the moment thing. No big deal. Just a simple mistake.”

David gets in the last word, though there’s little victory in it, and Patrick’s beautiful mouth twists through a complicated series of emotions before he can press it back into its familiar shape. “Yeah,” he says finally, burying his hands in his pockets. “Yeah, I guess it… was all a mistake.”

“Yeah,” David says, though that’s not really what he’d meant to say at all. Still, it’s an out, a way to try to move past this. Maybe one day it can just be a funny anecdote somewhere way back in the annals of their friendship, much like with him and Stevie. So he aims for levity, hoping to ease a little of the lingering tension between them. “Yeah, I, uh, imagine that’s why you don’t hear about many business partners with benefits.”

The corner of Patrick’s mouth just tilts toward a smile, though the humor in it doesn’t come anywhere close to reaching his eyes. “Yeah, probably so.”

“Maybe we can just…” David plucks at the sleeve of his sweatshirt, watching his fingers rub against the fabric. “...pretend it didn’t happen?”

There’s one wild second where David thinks Patrick might refuse, where he wants him to, where he wants Patrick to fight for this, for them, but it drifts away on his next breath. “That might be for the best. We can just refocus on the— on the business.”

“Okay,” David agrees, wishing he were doing anything but. “Good.”

“Good. Yeah.”

It is good, David tries to tell himself. Or at least the best option in a bad situation. Patrick isn’t pulling out of the business. They get to carry on being friends, or at least something like it. This is everything David wanted.

_ Not everything. _

Everything was never an option though. This  _ is _ good. It’s more than he deserves. More than he thought he was going to get. And now he can make a second attempt at what he set out to do in the first place: help Patrick find happiness. “It’s getting late,” he says. “You should get going. Wouldn’t want to keep Ken waiting.”

Patrick looks at him carefully, so carefully, and it’s so like the way he’d looked at David last night before he’d kissed him, like Patrick sees him, like he might see the truth if he looks long enough, and David wishes he could hide from it, wishes he could burrow down into his sweatshirt, down into the hollow of his own ribs to escape. Patrick had seen enough of David’s truth last night, and it hadn’t done him a damn bit of good.

“Right,” Patrick says eventually, turning away. “Right, I should go.”

He watches the curve of Patrick’s shoulders as he retreats toward the door, at least feeling like it won’t be the last time he’s treated to the sight. 

With a hand on the knob, Patrick pauses and turns back. “Goodnight, David.”

He wishes he could think of something else to say, but ultimately all he has is, “Goodnight, Patrick.”

And then Patrick’s gone, disappearing out into the night.

David could swear there was something there on his face just before he’d opened the door, something that looked an awful lot like sorrow, but he’s probably just projecting, unsure what else to do with this wellspring of it puddled in his own stomach. This is the best he could have hoped for. Still, it doesn’t stop him from feeling like he’s lost something, even if it’s something he was never going to get to keep. He shakes his hands and rolls his neck, trying to clear away a little of the melancholy that seems to have settled in his bones, and crosses the store to flip the lock so he can finish closing up and go home.

Before he can get there, however, the door opens again, and all the air rushes out of it as Patrick steps back inside.

“I can’t do it,” he announces. “I don’t want to date Ken.”

There’s a pleading look in his eyes as they bounce back and forth between David’s, and some frail, needle-boned thing in David’s chest unfurls its hopeful wings. “You— You don’t?”

Patrick takes a step closer, his hands coming up almost like he’s going to reach for David, and David nearly sways into them, wishing he would, but he clasps them together instead. “When he gave me his number, I thought it would be a good idea to… test the waters, I guess. It seemed like fun—go out with a guy, take off some of the pressure—but then you offered to, you know…”

He does know. And he also knows that they just agreed to pretend it didn’t happen. But Patrick doesn’t look like he wants to pretend at all. He looks a bit the way David feels about it, like he’s lit up from the inside at the mere memory of it. 

“I haven’t had a lot of casual sex in my life,” Patrick says, his gaze dropping to hands before he looks up at David again through his lashes. “But it’s enough to know that… that wasn’t casual. Not for me anyway. That was…”

“Unprecedented,” David breathes, the word slipping from his mouth unbidden.

“Yes.” 

The word sounds like relief, like the break of a dam.

David looks at him,  _ really _ looks at him, the warm, gold reflections of the store’s incandescent lights twinkling in his eyes like stars. He wonders if he makes a wish on one, will it come true? It’s worth a try. 

“So you’re… you’re not upset?”

“Upset?” Patrick sobs out a laugh. “I thought  _ you _ were upset because I kissed you.”

“No,” David insists. “No, no. I— That was—”

“Unprecedented?” Patrick’s smile is small and just a little smug, but it’s the most gorgeous thing David’s ever seen.

“Something like that.” He risks stepping closer, just a little, just enough to try to pull Patrick into his orbit. “So what you’re saying is…?”

Patrick steps across what little distance remains between them, nearly pressing himself into David’s chest, looking up at him all pink-cheeked and bright-eyed. “I’m saying I don’t want Ken. I want you.”

The laugh that spills out of David’s mouth is high and hysterical, relieved and disbelieving all at once. “You mean you actually  _ like  _ me? Are you sure?”

“Yes, David,” Patrick replies, grinning wide, his whole face lit up with joy. “That’s what I was trying to tell you last night. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you for two yea—”

David’s kissing him before he can finish the sentence, pressing their lips together hard enough to bruise and swallowing down the surprised little sound that tries to slip out of Patrick’s mouth. His arms come up around Patrick’s shoulders, and Patrick’s wrap around his waist, pulling them closer into one another, their lips parting just enough to taste the happiness on each other’s tongue.

Patrick pulls his head back suddenly, though his arms tighten around David’s middle. “Wait a minute. You think I  _ like _ you?” He shakes his head and looks up at David, steady and earnest. ”David Rose, I love you.” 

It’s a good thing Patrick’s holding him so tightly or he might just crack in two. 

Patrick leans in again, brushing the words against David’s smiling mouth. “I’m so fucking in love with you.”

David does the only thing that he can do and kisses him again. He kisses him with all the joy and the fear and the hope and the trust that have been building in him for two long years. He kisses him, and he kisses him, and he kisses him some more.

They stay there a while, breathing each other in, until they’re finally both smiling too much to kiss properly. David leans back but doesn’t take his hands off Patrick, just brings them around to trace the lapels on his blazer, smooth across his chest, rub at his shoulders. “You look very nice, by the way.”

“Thanks. It’s a good thing, too, because I’ve got a hot date.” A brief flash of doubt sparks up like a match, but Patrick is there to blow it right out. “Can I take you to dinner?”

David’s answering grin is shy, which is ridiculous considering they’ve already slept together, but he can’t help the way this all feels new. “You don’t have to do that. I look— I look awful.”

“You look perfect,” Patrick says, and there’s so much sincerity in his face that David actually believes that he believes that.

So with the lights off and everything in its proper place, they step out into the night together. David turns the lock on the door and then turns to Patrick in the darkness. It’s easier here, maybe, or maybe he just wants to say it now before he loses the nerve.

“I-I love you, too. Just so you know.”

Patrick kisses him softly—”Thank you”—and takes David’s hand for the short walk over to the cafe. 

There they’ll talk and tease each other and laugh with Stevie when she drops by for takeout and finds them sharing a plate of mozzarella sticks. Later they’ll make out a little more in Patrick’s car in the parking lot at the motel, and they’ll lie awake texting each other until they can’t keep their eyes open. Maybe in a few weeks or maybe months down the line David will cheer for his boyfriend at a baseball game. Maybe Patrick will get him a gift for his birthday. Maybe David will meet Patrick’s parents, or they’ll talk about moving in together, or Patrick will play a song for him at one of those open mic nights he’s been hosting at the store. Maybe, just maybe, David will even let Patrick convince him to go on a hike to that spot he’s always raving about.

And yes, maybe it’s all a little out of order—the sex and the kissing and the confessions and the milestones. Maybe it’s a little different than the way things might have been if either of them had been braver at the start, but they still got here, still found their way into each other’s arms, and in the end that’s all that really matters.

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on tumblr as [wild-aloof-rebel](http://wild-aloof-rebel.tumblr.com) (my Schitt's Creek blog) or [hudders-and-hiddles](http://hudders-and-hiddles.tumblr.com) (my main).


End file.
